College Major Question

This is a discussion on College Major Question within the A Brief History of Cprogramming.com forums, part of the Community Boards category; After hearing about the current job market for programmers I decided to look at the transfer agreements between my school ...

College Major Question

After hearing about the current job market for programmers I decided to look at the transfer agreements between my school and a univeristy I'm looking at. Currently I am following the list of courses for a Computer Science major. There was an agreement for a Computer Science and Engineering and one for Computer Engineering. The number of classes for the CS&E major were only a few more then the CS major. Anyone know of any problems with a CS&E major vs a CE or CS major?

I would imagine that a CS&E major would basically be more programming classes for a CE and less programming classes for a CS. I don't know why you would take a CS&E major... that's more or less a double major and more than likely, you can get a CS job with a CE degree, so why not go for it all and become a CE??

I'm a CE doing CS work at the moment, but I get paid more because I'm an engineer. This also means I've done more work in school (most likely) than a CS major... engineers usually have to take a more difficult class set.

edit... not sure if that answered your question or not!? Also, it's College with an E, not an A.

I don't know... it just seems like that should be a double major... not some piece of crap rolled together to make a new breed of major.

Engineering is component/hardware based. Science is software based. My guess is they took a Engineering cirriculum and gave you a few more programming classes. Otherwise, they couldn't call it engineering.

I don't think it is going to matter which of those degrees you get for programming purposes. But the engineering side might help for other things.

for programming: Once you get a degree, any degree, companies are more likely to care where you have worked before than they will about your degree type. They want to know that you had the will to finish school and they want to know that you have professional programming skills.

Thanks guys. I did a class by class comparison between CS and CE. Every class that is in CS is in CE also, plus CE requires one more programming class, a speech class, and general chemistry. The CS required the chemistry or physics line but I was already planning on the physics.

Will have to look that the Universities' website to see what else is different once I get there.

But I think I will go for CE, just seems like a more useful degree the CS.

I'm a little curious as to why you would switch majors based on current job conditions. Economies do turn around.

The tech sector is obviously making a come back, it's just more apparent in certain parts of the country than it is in others. For example, here in Chicago the market is flooded with programmers that have 20+ years experience but were laid off from the airlines, Lucent, Motorola, etc., so new graduates (i.e., a lot of my friends) are having a hard time competing for jobs with these people because of the experience they have. Other places like Orlando, San Francisco, Phoenix are projected to have up to 30% more development positions by the end of next year and can't hire people fast enough. /shrug.

I don't know your personal situation, maybe you just weren't happy with the computer science major, or maybe your just in it for the money. If the later is the case go pre-med

Too much blood and stuff. Besides they expect you to be aleast somewhat personable.
The market was only one reason. After looking at the course listing it seems that CE requires almost every class CS requires and of course a few more. And considering that I'm still in the first year I'm allowd to change my mind dang it

furthermore, i suppose that for the engineering field it's different. most people who study some kind of engineering want to, and will, end up with a job in engineering (although, off the top of my head, i do know of 3 people with graduate degrees in some kind of engineering that ended up as business people in corporate offices).

anyway, i wasn't trying to sound discouraging. if you want to a cs-related job THAT badly, believe me it's there (but it's also not a bad idea to let that cs degree open up some doors to other opportunities).